Reading Through History. (2015, December 13). History Brief: THe Dust Bowl. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-rBhbkvtm0

Reading Through History. (201, November 25). History Brief: Daily Life in the 1930s. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-rBhbkvtm0

Farm Labor in the 1930s

During the 1930s, some 1.3 million Americans from the Midwest and southwest migrated to California, which had a population of 5.7 million in 1930s. The arrival of Okies and Arkies set the stage for physical and ideological conflicts over how to deal with seasonal farm labor and produced literature that resonates decades later, as students read and watch "The Grapes of Wrath" and farmers and advocates continue to argue over how to obtain and treat seasonal farm workers.

Carey McWilliams once said that farm labor in California has "been lost sight of and rediscovered time and again." (quoted in Loftis, p191) Three recent books make important contributions to our understanding of farm labor issues in the 1930s. Interestingly, two of the three are not about farm workers: instead, they focus on the people who interpreted the California farm labor story of the 1930s.

Loftis has written a detailed and well documented 14-chapter book about the major figures who led efforts to publicize the plight of farm workers in the 1930s, the writers and photographers who interpreted the farm workers' story for the American public. She begins with the role of prominent Communists in the 1933 cotton strike, a four-week strike in October 1933 that involved 12,000 to 18,000 workers. Workers refused to pick the 1933 crop for the $0.60 per hundred pounds offered by growers, since the growers' prices had been raised by federal programs aimed at helping agriculture. Growers immediately evicted strikers from grower-owned labor camps, a tactic that backfired as striking workers moved into tent camps organized by the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union, reinforcing the strike's effectiveness.

California newspapers alternated between ignoring the strike or printing the growers' side until several strikers were killed by growers at a Pixley, California rally. The reporters and photographers who rushed to cover the strike generally reported that it was growers, not strikers, who were breaking labor and other laws. A politically ambitious federal relief official, George Creel, used a three-member arbitration panel appointed by the governor to force growers and workers to accept a compromise $0.75 per hundred pound piece rate, less than the $1 demanded by strikers, but 25 percent more than growers offered. Most cotton pickers were Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, but UC-Berkeley economists Paul Taylor and Clark Kerr selected a migrant from Texas and Oklahoma, Bill Hamett, to be the workers' representative in the final negotiations. Hamett remained a farm worker, but was blacklisted from jobs in the Pixley area.

Loftis interviewed Paul Taylor and Clark Kerr, both of whom grew up on family farms. Taylor believed in the agricultural job ladder, meaning that farm workers could become family farmers, and he encountered resistance at UC-Berkeley for his attacks on a California agribusiness that depended on seasonal farm workers who had little chance of becoming farmers. Kerr, UC president in the 1960s, spent several months in the San Joaquin Valley documenting migrant conditions for Taylor in 1933-34. A subsequent Taylor student, Stuart Jamieson, wrote the definitive history of farm worker unions between 1900 and 1950, as well as documenting the activities of the Associated Farmers, created in 1934 to prevent farm worker unionization.

Loftis emphasizes that John Steinbeck wanted to become a writer in the 1930s and interacted with artists and communists in Carmel. Steinbeck had a rare ability to fictionalize real situations, such as his account of a Watsonville apple harvesters' strike in the 1936 novel, "In Dubious Battle." Steinbeck worked summers on Sprekel Company farms in the Salinas Valley where he grew up, but always considered himself different from other farm workers.

Rural Migration News. (2003). Farm Labour. Retrieved from https://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=788

African American life during the Great Depression and the New Deal

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Arthur Rothstein (neg. no. LC-USF34-005788-D)

The Great Depression of the 1930s worsened the already bleak economic situation of African Americans. They were the first to be laid off from their jobs, and they suffered from an unemployment rate two to three times that of whites. In early public assistance programs African Americans often received substantially less aid than whites, and some charitable organizations even excluded blacks from their soup kitchens.

This intensified economic plight sparked major political developments among African Americans. Beginning in 1929, the St. Louis Urban League launched a national “jobs for Negroes” movement by boycotting chain stores that had mostly black customers but hired only white employees. Efforts to unify African American organizations and youth groups later led to the founding of the National Negro Congress in 1936 and the Southern Negro Youth Congress in 1937.

Virtually ignored by the Republican administrations of the 1920s, black voters drifted to the Democratic Party, especially in the Northern cities. In the presidential election of 1928 African Americans voted in large numbers for the Democrats for the first time. In 1930 Republican Pres. Herbert Hoover nominated John J. Parker, a man of pronounced antiblack views, to the U.S. Supreme Court. The NAACP successfully opposed the nomination. In the 1932 presidential race African Americans overwhelmingly supported the successful Democratic candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

 
The Roosevelt administration’s accessibility to African American leaders and the New Deal reforms strengthened black support for the Democratic Party. A number of African American leaders, members of a so-called “black cabinet,” were advisers to Roosevelt. Among them were the educator Mary McLeod Bethune, who served as the National Youth Administration’s director of Negro affairs; William H. Hastie, who in 1937 became the first black federal judge; Eugene K. Jones, executive secretary of the National Urban League; Robert Vann, editor of the Pittsburgh Courier; and the economist Robert C. Weaver.

African Americans benefited greatly from New Deal programs, though discrimination by local administrators was common. Low-cost public housing was made available to black families. The National Youth Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps enabled African American youths to continue their education. The Works Progress Administration gave jobs to many African Americans, and its Federal Writers Project supported the work of many black authors, among them Zora Neale Hurston, Arna Bontemps, Waters Turpin, and Melvin B. Tolson.

The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), established in the mid-1930s, organized large numbers of black workers into labour unions for the first time. By 1940 there were more than 200,000 African Americans in the CIO, many of them officers of union locals.

• African Americans. (2019). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from https://school-eb-com-au.db.plcscotch.wa.edu.au/levels/high/article/African-Americans/477096#285193.toc

The History Place. (2012). Toll of Uncertainty. Retrieved from http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/lange/dor12-100.htm

Tvlastnik. (2014, Jan 11). The Great Depression, Dust Bowl and Californian Migration_2011TV. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpd-7KsbIhM

Heroeswiki. (n.d.) Lennie Small. Retrieved from https://hero.fandom.com/wiki/Lennie_Small

1/4: Physical Disabilities in 1930s America (Context)

The Occupational Safety and Health Act was not introduced in the USA until 1970, so there was minimal health and safety regulations in 1930s California. Farmers used dangerous machinery and were often poorly trained, so accidents were common. While compensation for serious accidents was sometimes offered, the amount was often significantly below what a modern reader would expect.

People with disabilities were treated very unsympathetically by the majority of society. This view was similar to the treatment of the elderly and unproductive, also read the context of Elderly in 1930s America. Abnormal behaviour and low levels of economic productivity were thought of as a burden to society. To put this in proper context, freakshows were very highly attended, anything 'abnormal' or different such as disability was ridiculed or feared.

2/4: Physical Disabilities in Of Mice and Men 

In Of Mice and Men, Candy is paid just $250 by the boss, or five months' wages, for the loss of his entire hand while working on the ranch. Candy, a disabled character, is aware that he very soon he will be fired from work due to his him being unable to work as productively and efficient as the other ranch hands. In this context, Candy is trying to convince George to allow him to go with him to the dream ranch because, not only does Candy have the $350 to put the down payment on the farm, and he's willing to work at George's ranch since no one is going to help him, and in all likelihood, he's going to get fired soon.

"You seen what they done to my dog tonight? They says he wasn't no good to himself nor nobody else. When they can me here I wish somebody'd shoot me. But they won't do nothing like that. I won't have no place to go, an' I can't get no more jobs." 

People with mental disabilities in 1930s America were treated very unsympathetically by the majority of society. Abnormal behaviour and low levels of economic productivity were thought of as a 'burden to society'. Similarly, people of minorities were also treated badly by society (read the theme 'Racism in 1930's America').

The mentally disabled were usually placed by, or removed from, their families (usually in infancy) and housed in large professional institutions.

However, many of these facilities were 'self-sufficient' through the labour of the residents themselves. Heavy tranquillisation and assembly line methods of support were the norm. Services were provided based on the relative ease to the provider, not based on the needs of the individual.

To understand the 1930's ideology, consider that society commonly thought that disabled people - the "feeble-minded" - should not have children and should be sterilised (full quote later on in this page).

4/4: Mental Disabilities in Of Mice and Men

George is highly protective of Lennie because George wants Lennie, a mentally disabled person, to have a chance in life (John Steinbeck suggests). George tells him not to speak at the job interview because George is well aware of society's views and would rather Lennie prove his ability, and prove society wrong, through his work ethic. Was George right to do so? Despite the best efforts for a disabled man to have a chance, Steinbeck reminds the reader of the harsh reality of the time for the disabled. Steinbeck's book makes a clear statement to society in the 1930s: 'the only option is for Lennie to be put down, just as the dog was put down.

Real context in the USA - Mental Disabilities in the 1930s:

   In 1914, Harry Laughlin published a Model Eugenical Sterilization Law that proposed to authorize sterilization of the “socially inadequate” – people supported in institutions or “maintained wholly or in part by public expense. The law encompassed the “feebleminded, insane, criminalistic, epileptic, inebriate, diseased, blind, deaf; deformed; and dependent” – including “orphans, ne’er-do-wells, tramps, the homeless and paupers.” By the time the Model Law was published in 1914, twelve states had enacted sterilization laws.
​
- Paul Lombardo ('Eugenics in the USA') - 1930s

Oxnotes. (n.d.) Context: Disabled in 1930s America. Retrieved from http://www.oxnotes.com/of-mice-and-men-context-disabled-in-1930s-america-gcse.html